Once upon a time, Australia's ex-soap stars faced a grim future of short-lived, embarrassing pop careers followed by a gentle slide down the bill in panto. I suspect there are alumni of Neighbours and Home and Away even now signing up as "back end of cow" for the Christmas season. All the more reason to admire Daniel MacPherson, who not only escaped from Neighbours and had a good run in The Bill, but is now the star of a bright new drama series of his own. Tripping Over (Five) casts him as - wait for it - an Australian ex-soap star facing a grim future of short-lived blah blah blah. And it actually gets away with it.

In last night's opener, MacPherson was Ned, a perky young guy with minimal talent but a nice body. He left Australia to make it in the UK, heedless of friendly warnings ("Things can go wrong! Talk to Jason!"). A bright future of bit parts with the RSC awaited, but first he stopped off in Bangkok - where bad things happened to Ned and his friends. One got blown up, another discovered her boyfriend was gay, the remaining pair fell in love and then were obliged to part. All went their separate ways to Australia and England, packing enough plot to keep Tripping Over going for several transcontinental weeks. This was the most hook-laden debut I've seen since Desperate Housewives; whether it can sustain the drama with its protagonists so widely scattered remains to be seen.

Tripping Over bristled with good one-liners, notably a young woman's riposte to a comment on her recent weight-loss. "Yes," she beamed, "I got dengue fever in Bombay." The mix of soap, drama and screwball comedy betrayed the presence of creator and writer-in-chief Mike "Cold Feet" Bullen, now an Australian resident. The warm climate has obviously dried out the creeping wetness of his last couple of creations, Life Begins and All About George.

I have high hopes for Tripping Over, one of Five's best-ever acquisitions: it seems good-humoured, unsentimental and well-plotted. In the current TV climate, I dare not ask for more. It also reminded me why I never ever want to go to Bangkok, which looked like hell on earth, and why I like living in London, which has never been shot more beautifully.

If you believed Spooks (BBC1), you'd think London was crawling with double-crossing government officials with complex personal lives and wonderfully clear skin, which is quite an exciting fantasy for a Monday night. I love all the bits in Spooks that are like The Avengers crossed with CSI - serious, well-groomed people deadpanning ridiculous lines and doing cool karate moves. Hermione Norris is glacially aloof even when kicking seven bells out of swarthy villains. She kept appearing in doorways in a leather coat, rattling off outrageously clunky exposition; even her fellow actors looked stunned.

Fantasy it obviously is, but Spooks has chosen some uncomfortably real material as its starting point. Last night, we saw a couple of Muslim clerics murdered by Christian extremists, an escalating wave of revenge attacks and the prospect of a pitched battle between Christ and Muhammad. Neither side came off well. Christian churches were full of sinister statues and the inevitable post-Omen choral chanting. Christians were balding fundamentalists building private armies, Muslims were wild-eyed, hairy-faced victims, and Jews featured only as gun-toting Mossad hitmen. The goodies were all gorgeous, with full heads of hair; never has a TV actor been so physically fetishised as Rupert Penry-Jones in Spooks, lit and shot like a fine work of art.

Spooks is a stylish, well-executed thriller, and I can even forgive the use of split screens. But I do wonder whether turning the very real tensions surrounding Islam in Britain into the stuff of slick fantasy entertainment is helpful - especially when, as is so often the case, the serious issues it raised were side-stepped in favour of some mushy stuff about a guilty absent dad (Penry-Jones) and his adorable blond moppet of a son. Holy War fizzled out into "I love you Dad" and a kiss goodnight. Why this focus on absent fathers and resentful children? Perhaps TV professionals don't spend enough time with their families.